Mesoamerica is the region extending from central Mexico south to the northwestern border of Costa Rica that gave rise to a group of stratified, culturally related agrarian civilizations spanning an approximately 3,000-year period before the European discovery of the New World by Columbus. Mesoamerican is the adjective generally used to refer to that group of Pre-Columbian cultures. This refers to an environmental area occupied by an assortment of ancient cultures that shared religious beliefs, art, architecture, and technology in the Americas for three thousand years.
Characteristics
Some common shared Mesoamerican traits include:
Intensive agriculture based heavily on maize (corn),
Small and large ceremonial buildings and complexes, often with prominent terraced pyramids and shrines.
Worship of a set of deities including a rain god, a sun god, a feathered-serpent god (known to the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl),
A Vigesimal numbering system,
The use of a 260-day ritual calendar in addition to the solar year calendar (see: Mesoamerican calendars),
A ritual ball game (see: Mesoamerican ballgame)
And various other artistic and cultural conventions.
Mesoamerica is also a canonical example of a linguistic area: all of the major Mesoamerican languages show some subset of a pool of common traits, despite being made up of many different language families. Mesoamerica's economy and geopolitics benefited from extensive use of a lingua franca, the Nahuatl language, since at least the 7th century, and perhaps going back as far as 2,000 years.
Mesoamerica is one of our planet’s six cradles of early civilizations. Many traits of the ancient cultures of Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico continue to the present time today. Several of these cultural inventions and traits have spread throughout the world, in both past and present. Mesoamerican metacivilizations included the Olmec, Zapotec, Teotihuacán, Maya, Mixtec, Huastec (also located on Aridoamerica), Pipil, Totonac, Toltec, Tarascan, and the Aztec.
San Lorenzo and La Venta: 1200 - 400 BC
The first civilization in central and north America develops in about 1200 BC in the coastal regions of the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico. Known as the Olmec civilization, its early site is at San Lorenzo.
From about 900 BC the capital city of the Olmecs moves further east along the Gulf coast to La Venta, an island site in the Tonalá River. For the next 500 years La Venta is the cultural centre of a large region, trading with much of central America. The Olmec traditions of sculpture and of temple architecture, developed over eight centuries, will influence all the subsequent civilizations of the region.
The most characteristic sculptures of San Lorenzo and La Venta are astonishing creations. They are massive stone heads, more than two metres in height, of square-jawed and fat-lipped warriors, usually wearing helmets with ear flaps.
The chunky and uncompromising quality of these images will remain typical of much of the religious art of Mesoamerica, particularly in the region around Mexico City. It can be seen in the rain-god masks of Teotihuacán (about 2000 years ago), in the vast standing warriors at Tula (about 1000 years ago) and in the brutally severe monumental sculpture of the Aztecs (500 years ago).
The first American monuments: from 1200 BC
In both the centers of Olmec civilization, at San Lorenzo and then La Venta, numerous large clay platforms are raised. At their top there are believed to have been temples, or perhaps sometimes palaces, built of wood. The concept of climbing up to a place of religious significance becomes the central theme of pre-Columbian architecture.
Its natural conclusion is the pyramid, with steps by which priests and pilgrims climb to the top (unlike the smooth-sided tomb pyramids of Egypt). La Venta initiates this long American tradition too. One of its pyramids is more than 30 metres high.
The Olmec temple complexes set the pattern for societies in America over the next 2000 years. The pyramids, with their temples and palaces, dominate the surrounding dwellings as powerfully as the priestly rulers and their rituals dominate the local community.
It is also probable that the Olmecs engage in a custom which remains characteristic of all the early civilizations of America - the ritual of human sacrifice, reaching its grisly peak in the ceremonies of the Aztecs.
The Zapotecs and Monte Alban: from 400 BC
The Zapotecs are among the first people to develop the Olmec culture in other regions. From about 400 BC at Monte Alban, to the south of the Olmecs, they establish a ceremonial centre with stone temple platforms.
Monte Alban eventually becomes the main city of this part of southern Mexico. Pyramids, an astronomical observatory and other cult buildings and monuments (including America's earliest carved inscriptions) are ranged in a temple district along the top of a ridge. In terraces on the slopes below there is a town of some 30,000 people. The Zapotecs thrive on this site for more than 1000 years, finally abandoning it in about AD 700.
Teotihuacán and Tikal: early centuries AD
Around the beginning of the Christian era two regions of central America begin to develop more advanced civilizations, still based on a priestly cult and on temple pyramids.
The dominant city in the northern highlands is Teotihuacán. It eventually covers eight square miles, with a great central avenue running for some two miles. At its north end is the massive Pyramid of the Moon. To one side of the avenue is the even larger Pyramid of the Sun (66 meters high). The sculptures on an early pyramid in Teotihuacán introduce Quetzalcoatl, the most important god of ancient Mesoamerica. His image is a snake's head with a necklace of feathers (the plumed serpent).
The other classic civilization of Mesoamerica is that of the Maya, developing in what is now the eastern part of Mexico and the neighboring regions of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and western Honduras. Much of this region is jungle. The inaccessibility of the great centers of Maya culture (of which the largest is Tikal) means that they outlast all rivals, surviving a succession of violent changes in the civilization of central Mexico.
The first of these changes is the sudden collapse of Teotihuacán in about AD 650. It is not known for certain which invaders overrun this greatest city of ancient America. But the next people to establish themselves as rulers of the valley of Mexico, in the 10th century, are the Toltecs.
The first American script: 2nd c. BC - 3rd c. AD
Of the various early civilizations of central America, the Maya make the greatest use of writing. In their ceremonial centers they set up numerous columns, or stelae, engraved with hieroglyphs. But they are not the inventors of writing in America.
Credit for this should possibly go back as far as the Olmecs. Certainly there is some evidence that they are the first in the region to devise a calendar, in which writing of some sort is almost essential. The Zapotecs, preceding the Maya, have left the earliest surviving inscriptions, dating from about the 2nd century BC. The first Mayan stele to be securely dated is erected at Tikal in the equivalent of the year AD 292.
The Mayan script is hieroglyphic with some phonetic elements. Its interpretation has been a long struggle, going back to the 16th century, and even today only about 80% of the hieroglyphs are understood. They reveal that the script is used almost exclusively for two purposes: the recording of calculations connected with the calendar and astronomy; and the listing of rulers, their dynasties and their conquests.
Thus the priests and the palace officials of early America succeed in preserving writing for their own privileged purposes. In doing so they deny their societies the liberating magic of literacy.
The Toltecs: 10th - 12th century
At some time after the collapse of Teotihuacán in the 7th century, migrants from the north move into the valley of Mexico. They are the Toltecs, who by the middle of the 10th century are dominating the region from a capital city at Tula. In an otherwise traditional complex of pyramid temples in the Mesoamerican style, Tula introduces one new element - the vast stone statues of warriors surmounting the main pyramid.
Late in the 10th century the Toltecs expand their empire to the north, capturing the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá and establishing a regime sometimes described as Toltec-Maya. The Temple of the Warriors at Chichén Itzá echoes the prototype at Tula.
The Toltecs lose control of their empire during the 12th century, when both Tula and Chichén Itzá are destroyed. But the Toltecs are not immediately replaced by another ruling dynasty in central Mexico. Instead the region lapses into a prolonged period of chaos and anarchy.
Not until the 14th century does a migrant tribe create a base, at what is now Mexico City, from which they will establish the last and the most powerful of the Indian empires of central America. They are the Aztecs.
The Aztecs and Mexico City: 14th century AD
The Aztecs are a tribe, according to their own legends, from Aztlan somewhere in the north of modern Mexico. From this place, which they leave in about the 12th century AD, they derive their name as Aztecs. By the time they settle again, after two centuries of migration and warfare, they are calling themselves by a different name - the Mexica.
This is the name they use when the Spaniards discover and conquer them in the 16th century. Their capital later becomes known as Mexico City, and the entire region acquires the name of Mexico.
It is either in the year 1325 or, more probably, 1345 that the Aztecs settle on an uninhabited island in Lake Tetzcoco (the difference in date depends on how the Mesoamerican 52-year calendar cycle is integrated with the chronology of the Christian era). They call their settlement Tenochtitlan.
Their prospects in this place, where they are surrounded by enemy tribes, seem as unpromising as those of the Venetians on their bleak lagoon islands a few centuries earlier. Like Venice, against all the odds, Tenochtitlan becomes the centre of a widespread empire - and it does so much more rapidly, stretching across central America within a century. But unlike Venice, this is not an empire of trade. It is based on the Aztecs' ferocious cult of war.
Aztec sun rituals: 15th - 16th century AD
The patron deity of the Aztecs is Huitzilopochtli, god of war and symbol of the sun. This is a lethal combination. Every day the young warrior uses the weapon of sunlight to drive from the sky the creatures of darkness - the stars and the moon. Every evening he dies and they return. For the next day's fight he needs strength. His diet is human blood.
The need of the Aztecs to supply Huitzilopochtli chimes well with their own imperial ambitions. As they extend their empire, they gather in more captives for the sacrifice. As the sacrifices become more numerous and more frequent, there is an ever-growing need for war. And reports of the blood-drenched ceremonies strike terror into the enemy hearts required for sacrifice.
A temple at the top of a great pyramid at Tenochtitlan (now an archaeological site in Mexico City) is the location for the sacrifices. When the pyramid is enlarged in 1487, the ceremony of re-dedication involves so much bloodshed that the line of victims stretches far out of the city and the slaughter lasts four days. The god favors the hearts, which are torn from the bodies as his offering.
Festivals and sacrifice are almost continuous in the Aztec ceremonial year. Many other gods, in addition to Huitzilopochtli, have their share of the victims.
Each February children are sacrificed to maize gods on the mountain tops. In March prisoners fight to the death in gladiatorial contests, after which priests dress up in their skins. In April a maize goddess receives her share of children. In June there are sacrifices to the salt goddess. And so it goes on. It has been calculated that the annual harvest of victims, mainly to Huitzilopochtli, rises from about 10,000 a year to a figure closer to 50,000 shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards.
The most important gods, apart from Huitzilopochtli, are the rain god Tlaloc (who has a temple beside Huitzilopochtli's on top of the great pyramid in Tenochtitlan) and Quetzalcoatl, god of fertility and the arts.
Quetzalcoatl: 10th - 16th century AD
Human sacrifice plays relatively little part in the cult of Quetzalcoatl, but the god himself has an extraordinary role in American history. The reason is that he merges in Aztec legend with a historical figure from the Mesoamerican past.
A Toltec king, the founder of Tula in about 950, is a priest of Quetzalcoatl and becomes known by the god's name. This king, described as fair-skinned and bearded, is exiled by his enemies; but he vows that he will return in the year 'One Reed' of the 52-year calendar cycle. In 1519, a 'One Reed' year, a fair-skinned stranger lands on the east coast. The Aztecs welcome him as Quetzalcoatl. He is the Spanish conquistador Cortes.
Cortes advances into Mexico: AD 1519
Cortes reaches the coast of Mexico, in March 1519, with eleven ships. They carry some 600 men, 16 horses and about 20 guns of various sizes. The Spanish party is soon confronted by a large number of Indians in a battle where the effect of horses and guns (both new to the Indians) is rapidly decisive. Peace is made and presents exchanged - including twenty Indian women for the Spaniards. One of them, known to the Spaniards as Doña Marina, becomes Cortes' mistress and interpreter.
Cortes then sails further along the coast and founds a settlement at Veracruz, leaving some of his party to defend it.
Before proceeding inland, Cortes makes a bold gesture. He sinks ten of his ships, claiming that they are worm-eaten and dangerous. The single surviving vessel is offered to any of his soldiers (and now sailors too, about 100 in all, liberated from their previous duties) who would prefer to return immediately to Cuba, publicly admitting that they have no stomach for the great task ahead. No one takes him up.
His small party is now irretrievably committed to the success of the adventure. Cortes leads them into the interior of the country.
The next battles, far more dangerous than the first encounters on the coast, are with the Tlaxcala people. The Spaniards eventually defeat them, and are received as conquerors in their capital city. This is a victory of great significance in the unfolding story, for the Tlaxcaltecs are in a state of permanent warfare with their dangerous neighbours. Any enemy of the Aztecs is a friend of theirs. They become, and remain, loyal allies of the Spaniards in Mexico.
In November 1519 when Cortes approaches Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztecs, his small force is augmented by 1000 Tlaxtalecs. But to the astonishment of the Spaniards, no force is needed.
Cortes and Montezuma: AD 1519-1520
The Aztec emperor, Montezuma II, has had plenty of warning of the arrival of the fair-skinned bearded strangers. He also knows that this is a One-Reed year in the Mexican calendar cycle, when the fair-skinned bearded Quetzalcoatl will at some time return.
He sends the approaching Spaniards a succession of embassies, offering rich gifts if they will turn back. When these fail, he decides against opposing the intruders with force. Instead Cortes is greeted in Tenochtitlan, on 8 November 1519, with the courtesy due to Quetzalcoatl or his emissary. In the words of one of the small band of conquistadors, they seemed to have luck on their side.
For a week Cortes and his companions enjoy the hospitality of the emperor. They sit in his hall of audience and attempt to convert him to Christianity. They clatter round his city on their horses, in full armor, to see the sights (they are particularly shocked by the slab for human sacrifice and the newly extracted hearts at the top of the temple pyramid).
But Cortes is well aware of the extreme danger of the situation. He devises a plan by which the emperor will be removed from his own palace and transferred to the building where the Spaniards are lodged.
The capture of the emperor is carried out with a brilliantly controlled blend of persuasion and threat. The result is that Montezuma appears to maintain his full court procedure under Spanish protection. A few hundred Spaniards have taken control of the mighty Aztec empire.
During the next year, 1520, chaos and upheaval result from the approach of a rival Spanish expedition, launched from Cuba to deprive Cortes of his spoils. He is able to defeat it, but at a high price. In his absence the 80 Spaniards left in Tenochtitlan lose control of the city - largely thanks to their own barbarous treatment of the inhabitants.
When Cortes returns, he finds garrison and emperor besieged together. He persuades Montezuma to address his people from a turret, urging peace. The hail of missiles greeting this attempt leaves the emperor mortally wounded.
The situation is now so desperate that Cortes withdraws his army from the city in July 1520. With Tlaxcala assistance he captures it again a year later, on 13 August 1521. There is no further Aztec resistance. The conquest of central Mexico is complete.
A brutal end: AD 1521-1533
The destruction by the Spaniards of the great Inca empire in Peru, twelve years after the similar fate of the Aztecs, brings to an effective end nearly three millennia of indigenous civilization in America - though the Maya, hard to suppress in the Yucatan jungle, preserve for a while their own ways.
The Spanish destroy the precious artifacts of these cultures with an unprecedented thoroughness - mainly in their lust for gold and silver, but sometimes (as with Mayan manuscripts) as an ideological assault on paganism. The result is that there is relatively little to show now for these rich cultures and their highly skilled crafts. Only the great pyramid mounds of their temples stand today as gaunt witness of a vivid past.
Questions
What is Mesoamerica?
What are some shared characteristics of Mesoamerican culture?
Describe the sculpture of the San Lorenzo and La Venta era.
What was this society called?
When does the pyramid develop?
What is the significance of Teotihuacán? Of Tikal?
Who make the most use of writing? Who invented writing among the early Americans?
Describe Mayan script. What is it like?
What new innovation do the Toltecs add to the pyramid temple?
Describe where the Aztecs come from.
What was the Aztec religion like?
How do the Spanish manage to conquer the Aztec nation?
What impact do the Spanish have on Mesoamerican art and culture?
Characteristics
Some common shared Mesoamerican traits include:- Intensive agriculture based heavily on maize (corn),
- Small and large ceremonial buildings and complexes, often with prominent terraced pyramids and shrines.
- Worship of a set of deities including a rain god, a sun god, a feathered-serpent god (known to the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl),
- A Vigesimal numbering system,
- The use of a 260-day ritual calendar in addition to the solar year calendar (see: Mesoamerican calendars),
- A ritual ball game (see: Mesoamerican ballgame)
And various other artistic and cultural conventions.Mesoamerica is also a canonical example of a linguistic area: all of the major Mesoamerican languages show some subset of a pool of common traits, despite being made up of many different language families. Mesoamerica's economy and geopolitics benefited from extensive use of a lingua franca, the Nahuatl language, since at least the 7th century, and perhaps going back as far as 2,000 years.
Mesoamerica is one of our planet’s six cradles of early civilizations. Many traits of the ancient cultures of Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico continue to the present time today. Several of these cultural inventions and traits have spread throughout the world, in both past and present. Mesoamerican metacivilizations included the Olmec, Zapotec, Teotihuacán, Maya, Mixtec, Huastec (also located on Aridoamerica), Pipil, Totonac, Toltec, Tarascan, and the Aztec.
From about 900 BC the capital city of the Olmecs moves further east along the Gulf coast to La Venta, an island site in the Tonalá River. For the next 500 years La Venta is the cultural centre of a large region, trading with much of central America. The Olmec traditions of sculpture and of temple architecture, developed over eight centuries, will influence all the subsequent civilizations of the region.
The chunky and uncompromising quality of these images will remain typical of much of the religious art of Mesoamerica, particularly in the region around Mexico City. It can be seen in the rain-god masks of Teotihuacán (about 2000 years ago), in the vast standing warriors at Tula (about 1000 years ago) and in the brutally severe monumental sculpture of the Aztecs (500 years ago).
Its natural conclusion is the pyramid, with steps by which priests and pilgrims climb to the top (unlike the smooth-sided tomb pyramids of Egypt). La Venta initiates this long American tradition too. One of its pyramids is more than 30 metres high.
It is also probable that the Olmecs engage in a custom which remains characteristic of all the early civilizations of America - the ritual of human sacrifice, reaching its grisly peak in the ceremonies of the Aztecs.
Monte Alban eventually becomes the main city of this part of southern Mexico. Pyramids, an astronomical observatory and other cult buildings and monuments (including America's earliest carved inscriptions) are ranged in a temple district along the top of a ridge. In terraces on the slopes below there is a town of some 30,000 people. The Zapotecs thrive on this site for more than 1000 years, finally abandoning it in about AD 700.
The dominant city in the northern highlands is Teotihuacán. It eventually covers eight square miles, with a great central avenue running for some two miles. At its north end is the massive Pyramid of the Moon. To one side of the avenue is the even larger Pyramid of the Sun (66 meters high). The sculptures on an early pyramid in Teotihuacán introduce Quetzalcoatl, the most important god of ancient Mesoamerica. His image is a snake's head with a necklace of feathers (the plumed serpent).
The first of these changes is the sudden collapse of Teotihuacán in about AD 650. It is not known for certain which invaders overrun this greatest city of ancient America. But the next people to establish themselves as rulers of the valley of Mexico, in the 10th century, are the Toltecs.
The first American script: 2nd c. BC - 3rd c. AD
Credit for this should possibly go back as far as the Olmecs. Certainly there is some evidence that they are the first in the region to devise a calendar, in which writing of some sort is almost essential. The Zapotecs, preceding the Maya, have left the earliest surviving inscriptions, dating from about the 2nd century BC. The first Mayan stele to be securely dated is erected at Tikal in the equivalent of the year AD 292.
Thus the priests and the palace officials of early America succeed in preserving writing for their own privileged purposes. In doing so they deny their societies the liberating magic of literacy.
Late in the 10th century the Toltecs expand their empire to the north, capturing the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá and establishing a regime sometimes described as Toltec-Maya. The Temple of the Warriors at Chichén Itzá echoes the prototype at Tula.
Not until the 14th century does a migrant tribe create a base, at what is now Mexico City, from which they will establish the last and the most powerful of the Indian empires of central America. They are the Aztecs.
This is the name they use when the Spaniards discover and conquer them in the 16th century. Their capital later becomes known as Mexico City, and the entire region acquires the name of Mexico.
Their prospects in this place, where they are surrounded by enemy tribes, seem as unpromising as those of the Venetians on their bleak lagoon islands a few centuries earlier. Like Venice, against all the odds, Tenochtitlan becomes the centre of a widespread empire - and it does so much more rapidly, stretching across central America within a century. But unlike Venice, this is not an empire of trade. It is based on the Aztecs' ferocious cult of war.
Aztec sun rituals: 15th - 16th century AD
The need of the Aztecs to supply Huitzilopochtli chimes well with their own imperial ambitions. As they extend their empire, they gather in more captives for the sacrifice. As the sacrifices become more numerous and more frequent, there is an ever-growing need for war. And reports of the blood-drenched ceremonies strike terror into the enemy hearts required for sacrifice.
Festivals and sacrifice are almost continuous in the Aztec ceremonial year. Many other gods, in addition to Huitzilopochtli, have their share of the victims.
The most important gods, apart from Huitzilopochtli, are the rain god Tlaloc (who has a temple beside Huitzilopochtli's on top of the great pyramid in Tenochtitlan) and Quetzalcoatl, god of fertility and the arts.
A Toltec king, the founder of Tula in about 950, is a priest of Quetzalcoatl and becomes known by the god's name. This king, described as fair-skinned and bearded, is exiled by his enemies; but he vows that he will return in the year 'One Reed' of the 52-year calendar cycle. In 1519, a 'One Reed' year, a fair-skinned stranger lands on the east coast. The Aztecs welcome him as Quetzalcoatl. He is the Spanish conquistador Cortes.
Cortes then sails further along the coast and founds a settlement at Veracruz, leaving some of his party to defend it.
His small party is now irretrievably committed to the success of the adventure. Cortes leads them into the interior of the country.
In November 1519 when Cortes approaches Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztecs, his small force is augmented by 1000 Tlaxtalecs. But to the astonishment of the Spaniards, no force is needed.
He sends the approaching Spaniards a succession of embassies, offering rich gifts if they will turn back. When these fail, he decides against opposing the intruders with force. Instead Cortes is greeted in Tenochtitlan, on 8 November 1519, with the courtesy due to Quetzalcoatl or his emissary. In the words of one of the small band of conquistadors, they seemed to have luck on their side.
But Cortes is well aware of the extreme danger of the situation. He devises a plan by which the emperor will be removed from his own palace and transferred to the building where the Spaniards are lodged.
During the next year, 1520, chaos and upheaval result from the approach of a rival Spanish expedition, launched from Cuba to deprive Cortes of his spoils. He is able to defeat it, but at a high price. In his absence the 80 Spaniards left in Tenochtitlan lose control of the city - largely thanks to their own barbarous treatment of the inhabitants.
The situation is now so desperate that Cortes withdraws his army from the city in July 1520. With Tlaxcala assistance he captures it again a year later, on 13 August 1521. There is no further Aztec resistance. The conquest of central Mexico is complete.
The Spanish destroy the precious artifacts of these cultures with an unprecedented thoroughness - mainly in their lust for gold and silver, but sometimes (as with Mayan manuscripts) as an ideological assault on paganism. The result is that there is relatively little to show now for these rich cultures and their highly skilled crafts. Only the great pyramid mounds of their temples stand today as gaunt witness of a vivid past.
Questions